Nvidia brings its Grid virtual desktop to the masses

Nvidia is introducing a new graphics card option for its Grid virtual desktop system, promising to cut the costs of streaming graphics-intensive applications to employees.

The new card, the Tesla M10, includes 4 GPUs and 32GB of memory, or enough compute power to stream desktop apps to 64 end users, according to Nvidia.

Customers buy the graphics hardware in Grid servers from partners such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell, Cisco Systems and Nutanix, along with virtualization software such as VMware Horizon, Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenDesktop.

Nvidia

Proponents say running apps centrally and streaming them to end users can reduce hardware and management costs. Users can get by with cheaper PCs that don’t have enough compute power to run graphics-heavy programs. It can also make workers more mobile, because the streamed apps can be accessed from anywhere and on almost any client, including a tablet.